Ordering a computer - Need help with specs

[Rips]

I get a 12% discount if I order through the Dell website, which means I have to get a dell computer which I have no problem with.

I'm getting this computer for school and to play MMO's such as FFXIV, which means I'll need a great graphics card.

So far I've gathered that I need the following:

-Graphics Card (Not sure which to get)
-At least 4 Gigs of Ram
-Duo Processing Unit at least 2.7 GHz
-Power Supply at least 600 wats
-Motherboard
-Intel something
-Windows 7

I have roughly $1,400 to spend as a budget. I don't really want to order single parts as I can't get a discount.

I have no idea if I'm missing anything else. Hopping some experts can help me, especially those who are planning on playing FFXIV.

 

[Tribalinius]

Can we have more infos on the options you have when you go to the pc builder webpage? Usually, with Dell, you're pretty limited on what you can put in your pc and they also offer only 2-3 choices on every components :\.

 

[Rips]

If I have to fork out more money and give up my discount then I will and just order online. I was hopping I was able to stick to it, but after reading around it's not looking likely.

The graphics card is screwing with me. Not sure what to get for FFXIV.

 

[Strid]

If you have even $1000 to spend you could build a beast of a desktop, hell, even $700 would get you there. I'd say forget the measly 12% you'd get for strapping yourself down to a Dell, you'll save more building your own. Any computer will be fine for school, even the one you're using to post with so anything you build would be fine as well. If you meant that you needed it to be a laptop then that sucks to hear. In the case you feel you need a laptop for school, which I quite frankly will never understand, you're goin' to be severely loosing the value of your PC budget as well as cutting yourself off from a long life of PC gaming since you can't upgrade them. Even servicing them would cost you a grip.

That aside, I've been tossin' around the idea of building a new PC myself. Considering I build all of my PCs I know that around $700 will build me a great PC for the next 5 years and will be useful even longer than that with a simple graphics card upgrade. Anyway, I got all of this from Newegg and if I plan to go through with it will buy the parts from them.

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (I go with Black Editions because they usually have cores that are locked but still usable if you unlock them so it could easily be turned into more than a quad core processor barring luck of the draw) $179.99

GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5770 $169.99

PSU: $80 (that is my limit, you can buy great power supplies in that range that will last as long as your PC) Antec or Corsair would be the brand of choice and 600+ watts would be more than enough unless you wanted to use two graphics cards.

Motherboard: Anything with the AM3 socket will do (barring processor, but I'm using the one listed above) and I prefer x4 memory expansions to x2 so the range is from $120-140. There are more expensive ones, like ones with military parts, but they're just a waste of money unless you plan to beat the thing.

Memory: The AM3 socket mobos support DDR3 so I'll go with 2 sticks of DDR3 ram both with 2GB on them for starters (I have two more slots left to expand upon but will do that later, if you have the budget, you could do it now) The range for 2x 2GB sticks is $80-90.

That puts the total at around $590.00.

Some things I left off was a case and cooling. I already have a case and so do you if you have a normal sized desktop. As for cooling I just reuse the fans I have used on previous builds, I don't do anything special, just case fans. You will however need some good thermal glue for when you mount your processor, but tubes of that are pretty damn cheap. As for the graphics card, I wouldn't use anything below the specs of an HD 5770. Sure anything 9600GT and up will work, but the minimum specs never have user quality in mind, just that you can simply run the game.The HD 5770 has an extremely good price on it for what it has: 850MHz core, 1GB of DDR5 (very important), and Direct X11 support. You could go Nvidia if you wanted, but try to find one with at least the specs of the 5770, it will probably cost a lot more though and not because it is better, but because Nvidia has had a lot of trouble keeping up with ATI in terms of their parts. Stay away from any GPU maker's budget line of GPUs. For ATI GPUs they end in xx50, ex: HD 5750, 5850, etc. Those are made with cheap parts and are often not as good as the specs show, cutting corners is what goes on in them. As for Nvidia cards I'm not sure what their budget #'s are since I have never preferred their cards. If you have the money to spend like you say, you could get a HD 5870 and have a high tier card that will last you as long as your PC most likely. Goin' with ATI cards though you loose Nvidia's Physx (it doesn't do near what you think it would...). However, that's very trivial. Hell, it probably wouldn't even be utilized in an MMO in the first place. With an ATI card buildings still crumble, leaves still fall, and particle effects are still top notch all the same, nothing to see here in my opinion. I also wouldn't strap myself down to a dual core at this point. Quad cores are usually around the same price and if not, just a bit more ($20-30). No sense in strapping in a dual core anymore, none at all unless you have budget issues. Even then it'd still be ebst to save up the extra bit to make sure you're building something that will last.

 

[Tribalinius]

Here's my take on Intel side, keep in mind that I worked with the totality of the 1400$ budget here. It's actually pretty close to a PC I built last week. I'll post up the specs and explain after.

Case: CoolerMaster Elite RC-330 39.99$
PSU: Seasonic M12II 620 620W 89.99$
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R 209.99$
CPU: Intel Core i7-930 2.8GHz Quad 289.99$
RAM: Patriot Extreme Viper 6GB DDR3 1600MHz 174.99$
Video: ASUS ENGTX470 GTX 470 1280MB GDDR5 314.99$
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 32MB 89.99$
DVD: Samsung SH-S243N/BEBE 24.99$
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium X64 99.99$
______

Total: 1334.91 $

Case: Basic but very functional, it got a good airflow through all the case. One of the best advantage I find in that budget case are the snaps for the 3.5" / 5.25" cages. But really you could go with any casing in that range and it would do the work. Personally, I built around at least 30-40 pcs since last summer with that particular case and got no complaints from anyone yet lol.

PSU: If there's a part in a computer that I like to invest more just to have my mind free of trouble, it's the PSU. Strid hit the spot right on when he says 600W is good enough for that kind of system unless, like he says, you want to go the SLI/Crossfire way. As for my choice, I always had good experience with Seasonic in the past and it's a good brand. Granted you'll pay 90$ for a PSU but you'll have something sturdy on your hand for years to come. Additionally, the PSU above is modular so you can fit just the cables you need and leave the rest in the box and add them when you need it . It's also backed up by Seasonic 3 years warranty.

Motherboard: Yeah, well, I'm a Gigabyte fan as much as an ASUS fan. In this case, I decided to go with, to my taste, the best X58 board for the cost on the market at the moment. Core i7 boards are not very cheap to get in the first place. It's a low-end mainstream board but does the job perfectly well. For the cost, you won't get anything similar from ASUS unfortunately. An another interesting feature for future expansion: 2 USB 3.0 ports in the back and a SATA3 controller too inside.

CPU: Intel Core i7-930, do I need to say more lol? That quad core is a beast even stock. Granted you'd have more fun OCing with AMD and stuff but, if you were planning buying from Dell, in the first place, I doubt overclocking was something you were looking into in the first place. So I went with best Intel cpu on the market for the price. You don't have a lot of choice in the first place unless you want to pay above 500$ for a couple of MHz in extra. In any case, you can't go wrong with it. You won't have any issues playing, working, editing, compiling or anything.

RAM: Again it's a personal choice as a builder. Never had big issues with Patriot in the past couple of years. Yeah I got a couple of DOA and RMA to do but nothing out of control compared to OCZ for example. The motherboard supports DDR3 and triple channel. The logic would dictate to go with a kit of 3X2GB giving you a total of 6GB, which, is not bad at all considering today's standard. You also have the possibility to expend later on. The only advantage I find in Patriot beside the obvious quality, is the latency on their low latency kits. But honestly you could go with any brand. Patriot, Kingston and Corsair are pretty much the brands I trust when it comes to RAM.

Video: I'm always at a crossroad there and I always have difficulties to find reasons justifying going past the 300~$ price tag on a video card. Usually it goes from 300$ to 500$ for the next step. I'm not a big fan of the "old" ATI, never tried any card since AMD bought them though, I actually didn't have any opportunity since people who order me computers prefers nVidia or don't need any card since they use onboard video. It's also the last thing I check in a quote too the budget I have for a video card in general. In this case we happened to have the 300$ available so I went for the best card we could get for the money. I can't say exactly what a GTX 470 can compare on ATI's side but I'm sure as hell you won't have any trouble playing XIV or any video game that will come out for a while. It's also their brand new series of cards that got out in the last couple of months. Hell I can't even find my GTX 275 anywhere anymore lol.

@Strid: That would be GT -> GTS - > GTX to differentiate low/mid/high

HDD: 1 500GB is big enough to stash your documents, music, photos, porn, video games. As for the brand, I prefer seagate. They are usually more silent than Western Digital and you also got 5 years warranty on their hard drive. I'd suggest investing in an external hard drive if you need to backup important files too in the near future.

DVD: I went for the most basic DVD burner on the market but you could go for LG or Pionner if you wanted too. The price is relatively the same for every company. Just pick one in the bunch. I would not recommend Sony or Lite-On but it's due to past bad experiences with both companies.

OS: You don't want the 32 bits version since you'll be over 3gb of rams. Unless you need the features in the Pro edition, I'd recommend sticking with Home Premium since it would be money wasted.

I think I covered pretty much all the bases. Again I worked with the full extent of the 1400$ budget in the OP to make this quote. It's a high-end system and it's far from a budget build. I took into consideration that you wouldn't make any OC hence why there is no extra cooler. It should last you at least 4-5 years. I change my computers every 2 years or so due to work but for someone that goes on the internet, play some games, do homework/work, I really doubt you'll have to change it soon. For the price listing, I went also on newegg to keep everything in perspective.

Just one thing though, do you need a monitor?

I'll add some extra later on because I'm sure I forgot stuff.